


The Yearning Before

by Ashstriferous



Series: The Mourning After [1]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-22 05:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19661122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashstriferous/pseuds/Ashstriferous
Summary: Ikora needs a quiet night. Cayde's long since sworn himself to destroy any semblance of silence that's ever existed. Neither one of them can shake the feeling that something is about to go very wrong.





	The Yearning Before

The Tower was as quiet as it had ever been as Ikora swept across the courtyard. A few guardians milled about, dancing, chatting and leaping from impossible heights just as they would have in the light of day. From her stall, an unsleeping Tess Everis hawked her wares, while Kadi 55-30 muttered to herself incoherently. Zavala, at least, had long since retired -- she’d seen heard him rattling down the hallway outside her quarters just as she was laying down to sleep.

Not that it had lasted long. It was already late when she finally willed herself to close her eyes. It was later still when unconsciousness finally took hold of her, dragging her into what she had foolishly hoped would be a blissful nights sleep. 

It had barely been more than an hour before she woke again, gasping for air and tearing away from a darkness deeper than that which had covered her room. It took her what felt like an eternity to chase the last, sickly strands of the dream away, time in which she simply couldn’t will her heart to stop pounding.

It had started just as most of her dreams did -- nonsensical ramblings and whispers from worlds away. Sometimes, she could ignore them long enough to fall into a deep enough sleep to avoid dreams altogether. Other times, they rattled on about things that had passed, bringing clarity to that which she had agonized over. 

And then there were the dreams of foretelling. While she didn’t fancy herself some sort of prophetess, her intrinsic link with the chill of the void and her daliances in Hive research had made her something of a vector for vague premonitions. Usually -- and this case was no exception -- it was nothing more than a feeling of foreboding and a promise of an upcoming bout with deja vu. 

This dream, though still speaking promises of a future yet to come, was something else entirely. Where most of her dreams left her with an inkling of ambivalence when she woke, a massive lump of dread had now coiled itself within her gut. Panic clutched at her throat, making her breathing frantic and her voice shake as she spoke to her troubled Ghost.

Novice guardians, ones who drifted more toward heat and electricity rather than the cool brush of void, would have simply called what she experienced a nightmare. Other Guardians weren't her, though. They were not born with an innate sense of things that crawled in the murky depths beyond their own plane. Other Guardians, or at least those that dared not dance with shadows beyond their comprehension, did not know the feeling of a hive mind brushing against their own consciousness. 

It was more than a simple dream brought about by nearly a century of stress and savagery. It was a vision, a snippet of ominous prophecy that Ikora couldn't even begin to guess at the meaning of.

She’d roused herself and put on her armor once more, confident that sleep would not visit her twice this evening. At first, she’d wandered the halls that made up the vanguard quarters, but ultimately decided that she didn’t want to chance having to speak to anyone about what she had seen.

Instead, she’d made her way to the courtyard, and now found herself she sweeping down the steps toward the hangar. She offered only a brief nod to a half-asleep security guard and the frame that stood beside it. With luck, the hangar would be entirely empty. Though Holliday was known to pull all-nighters, Ikora knew she’d had no major projects looming. Lakshmi likely still sat at her post, but if Ikora had it her way, there would be hundreds of feet and at least two walls between them. 

Everyone else would either be sleeping or keeping to themselves. 

She planned to find a distant ledge -- one she could blink to and hide away in. It wasn’t the best place to sit and view the Traveler (that honor went to her newest post in the bazaar), but it did promise her a few hours alone with her looming deity. Without the Speaker to parse out her troubled thoughts, she’d found herself with no other choice than to ramble to the bringer of Light by herself and hope that somewhere along the way, she found the answers she was seeking.

At first glance, she’d believed herself correct in her assertion that the hangar would be deserted. Hunched up and cloaked in darkness as he was, Ikora nearly missed the sight of Cayde entirely. She would have thought him long gone from his own post, shirking his duties the second he deemed he’d done enough. At this hour, he would have been better suited for a bar, or perhaps even tucked into his own, messy quarters.

That was, after all, the reason she’d torn away from their quarters so quickly, after all. 

Distracted as he was, Ikora thought she might have been able to dodge him. To her credit, it wasn’t the _exo_ that caught sight of her. Rather, it was Sundance, who spotted her, and whose delighted spin of a greeting managed to catch her guardian’s attention. 

Cayde glanced up from his work. The LEDs that made up his optics lit up for a brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it second. Ikora had always found it fascinating how, where some exos were masters of stocism, others could somehow to be as expressive as their human (and awoken) counterparts. 

Leaning back in his chair, Cayde positioned his hands behind his head. Ikora wasn’t sure if he’d realized his slip and was simply trying to save face, or if it was a natural reaction to her presence. Traveler forbid she actually thought he was working. 

“Ikora,” his voice was as smooth as ever. “What brings you to my neck’a the woods?” 

Ikora pondered the question. It was casual enough, simply Cayde’s effort to fill the silence that she’d brought along with her. She could, in turn, maintain the facade, keep the conversation light, airy and lasting only long enough to be considered polite and professional. That was how he liked things, wasn’t it? Uncomplicated. 

They were opposites like that, she and him. Truly, she admired that about the exo -- it reminded her of a simpler time when she, too, felt unburdened. That had been a time either long before or long after wars, and most certainly before Osiris and before the vanguard.

They were different people when they first met, yet more alike each other than they would be ever after. Wild souls, they were,drawn to the tower (or whatever passed for it back then) for nothing more than equipment and competition. He’d been angry, or as close to angry as Cayde could get. He’d placed a hefty purse of glimmer on a titan that was almost twice her size, and promptly lost it when she’d evaporated them in a glorious nova bomb. “Lucky shot,” he’d called it. 

She wound up taking several more bags of glimmer from him after that.

Despite herself, the very corner of Ikora’s lip twitched upward. Distant and different though it was, it was still a fond memory. Once he’d gotten over his bluster, she recalled Cayde being something of a flirt. He’d tried embarrassingly hard to convince her to come back to the inn that he and Andal Brask had settled into for the night.

Every now and again, she’d asked herself how different things would have been if she hadn’t rolled her eyes and walked away. 

“Stretching my legs,” she finally answered, drawing herself from days long gone. It was easier for them both if she kept it light. 

“Spent too much time curled up with a book, eh?” Cayde’s mouth plates opened and expanded, forming a playful grin. Again with the unfathomable expressiveness.

“Something like that.”

She shifted closer, examining the holomap that Cayde had been tinkering with. Several symbols, both in Eliksni and in Common, dotted the broken landscape that was the Reef. Even as she watched, Cayde spun the map around a few times, lights of his eyes narrowing and dimming as if he were waiting for something to suddenly appear. She didn’t need to even ask, need to guess what he was doing. It had been a bone of contention between him and Zavala from the start. Cayde may have fancied himself aloof, but Ikora knew better. He often agonized over the bleeding and broken.

And the Reef was outright hemorrhaging. 

“Your reports said you had apprehended the barons,” she said, following Cayde’s gaze to a particular section of the map.

“I did,” he grunted, and waved the map away. Ikora did what she could to commit the sight to memory before it completely disappeared. She might not have taken a public stance when it came to Cayde and Zavala’s quarrel, but even she had to admit to being wary of the bloody skirmishes in the Reef. 

She’d study the mental map later. If she found anything, her Hidden could supply the information for her. There would be no need for Zavala to catch wind of her involvement.

“And yet…?” Any shred of information would be useful, whether or not Cayde realized it. 

For a long moment, Cayde was quiet. His gaze was distant, troubled even. It was the sort of expression he kept tucked away, hidden behind a mask of cheeky humor. If not for the dark of the night and the emptiness of the hangar, she doubted she would have seen it at all. It was rare that Cayde allowed himself moments of vulnerability. She both liked and dreaded to think that he reserved those moments for her. 

After all, she couldn’t recall a moment in which she had done the same for him. 

“Cayde?” she pressed, ignoring the sinister whisper in the back of her mind that branded her a hypocrite. “What is it?” 

The exo let out the sound of a breath, always a strange sound, all things considered. He seemed torn, likely between a lighthearted jab and a moment of honesty. She felt herself hold her breath, though for which outcome, she couldn’t say.

“You ever have a real bad feelin’ about somethin’?” he asked, without once meeting her eyes.

Ikora had often thought it endearing, the way Cayde slipped into a drawl when he was deep in thought. Now, it only troubled her. She thought of her own dream -- the crippling despair she’d woken up with for no explicable reason -- and suppressed a shudder.

_Simply a coincidence,_ she told herself. As if she were still that wild-eyed, crucible worn guardian that still believed in that sort of thing.

“Frequently,” she said aloud. She regretted her words the second they left her mouth. She should have been offering comfort. Instead, her voice came out stiff and cold.

She wasn’t the only one that noticed it, either. Cayde glanced up at her and tapped his temple. Something in his gaze had tightened, she realized -- just as he could be so open and easily read, he could close himself off just as readily.

“Right.” 

It hadn’t been her intention. She’d meant to open up, to relate to her companion over an unshakeable paranoia. A fool’s errand, she supposed.

She thought about saying something else, but a sharp beeping chased the words from her tongue. Cayde’s comms had lit up, displaying an incoming call. He swiped it away before she could identify the caller. She tried to pretend his movements _hadn’t_ been an attempt to avoid her prying eyes.

“Perhaps later?” she offered. It was both a far cry from the openness she’d meant to exude and a desperate attempt to find her way back to it. 

“Yeah, later.”

She tried to tell herself that they meant it, that as soon as Cayde finished his work, they could resume their conversation. Perhaps she’d bring some seed and feed the Colonel while they spoke. The chicken’s presence always seemed to put him at ease.

The pervasive feeling of dread quickly swept her hope away. 

Rather than a proper goodbye, Ikora simply nodded. For all her attempts at letting her guard down, she dreaded the idea of Cayde hearing the way fear gnawed at her vocal chords. It had been bad enough, letting even Ophiuchus hear it. Yet if she spoke now, she had no doubt that her voice would tremble.

Instead, turned on her heel fast enough to make her robes snap in the breeze she created. She’d hoped it would be loud enough to drown out Cayde’s conversation, to grant him some semblance of privacy as he addressed what he’d kept hidden from her. She certainly pretended that she didn’t hear Petra Venj’s voice, or anything about an “ongoing crisis.”

He would be back later, she told herself. They could talk about it then.

**Author's Note:**

> This is, in theory, going to be a two part series. You can follow me [on twitter](https://twitter.com/ashstriferous) to see if that actually happens.


End file.
